Bonus Episode with Dr. Sandy Shugart: The Enlightenment Examined

In our first Bonus Episode, Dr. Sandy Shugart joins me for an indepth examination of the Enlightenment Project and my contention that the promises of such were really a myth, one that has left society disillusioned and bordering on cynicism due to discovery that they were misled. The humans are not improving, not really changing at all from what our species has been all along, certainly not changing when the only agency of change is human will. But why? Dr. Shugart, one of my most important mentors, currently serving as a Senior Fellow at The Aspen Institute and also Quo Vadis Institute (based in Salzburg, Austria), stopped by to help me understand this tension within our modern secular society.

In the early episodes, particularly 1 and 3, I spoke about the Enlightenment and its impact on how we view the world. Starting at some point in the 1600s and building steam in the 1700s, a new way of thinking and considering life, both individually and corporately in civic structures, was emerging. With the American and French Revolutions, the Enlightenment took full form and was soon being elevated to a high plane, perhaps a mystical plane, and in that growing sense of a new way of thinking, the sense of "promises" from this Enlightenment emerged.

And yet, by the late 20th century, it has been manifestly apparent that those promises never arrived, particularly the myth that the human as species could and would improve. Some "Enlightenment Prophets" seemed to believe that a utopia would be soon achieved, but the horrendous 20th century, a century often held up as the triumph of the Enlightenment, was evidence enough to the failure of this concept.

So, as the 21st century has emerged, disillusionment has set in, particularly among the young (say, 40-under crowd). Since faith or even simply "the transcendent" has been marginalized, many have moved into cynicism, depression, and a general sense that life is not worth living. Of course this is part of my raison d'être for the podcast, and we needed to take a deeper dive in order to see the complexities of this topic.